Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Misogyny, Sexism, And Why RPS Isn’t Shutting Up.
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make a point.I want to try to break down why people object to the discussion, why
there is a concerted effort to deny the need for the discussion, and to
explain how my own tangential role in it all has affected me. I want to do
this because I want to dispel myths, raise awareness, and encourage others
to speak out. For those who think such articles are “preaching to the
choir”, were that true, I certainly want that choir to be bolstered,
encouraged to sing louder and truer. Sadly it’s not entirely true, as is
evidenced by the responses any such article receives on RPS. I want to speak
to those people too.

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PHJF wrote on Apr 7, 2013, 08:47:The next time somebody comes to me with a problem of theirs I'm going to tell them to fuck off because at least they aren't in Afghanistan. Problem solved!

I didn't mean to come off that way, although rereading my posts I certainly did sound as if that was what I suggesting. My main point was that people just need to keep things in perspective.

Having worked with foster kids for a while now, the average age I work with is about 15 or so, and about 8 out of 10 of the kids I work with are completely fucked. Let me repeat that: 15 years old and your life is completely fucked. Now strictly speaking, there's generally nothing physically stopping them, such as being wheel chair bound, from turning their life around, but the sum total of the shit they have been through, and all the things that their shitbag parents neglected to teach or instill in them, is such that they don't have the habits, knowledge, or skills to make the decisions necessary to turn things around. Aristotle was absolutely right when he suggested that good habits are essential to virtuous behavior, and that those who develop bad habits at an early age will rarely if ever live virtuous lives. And by the time the kid is a teenager it's generally game over: their habits have formed, they have a natural (for their age) distrust of authority figures and desire to assert themselves as individuals, and no one ever instilled in them virtues that create a moral compass (shoplifting is bad, recreational drugs probably won't move my life forward, school is essential to having any sort of life, etc.). These kids are absolutely making bad choices, but who, in their right mind, would think these bad choices are on them, and not on the people whose only qualification to raise a child was a functioning womb and a wad of sperm? The thing is though, it's the kid who gets to bear the consequence of parental incompetence: a ruined life for the next generation.

Your life, and my life, is pretty good in comparison, huh? I'm certainly not going to get worked up if I ever find myself making less than my coworkers for some arbitrary and unfair reason. I'd try to fix it, sure, just as we should try to fix unequal pay between men and women, but we shouldn't pretend that, in the scheme of things, this is some great evil. A minor evil, to be sure, but not a great one.